“…because dem Computer brauchst' es ja nicht zeigen.”*: because + German main clause word order

Abstract

This paper aims to explain firstly, different frequency distributions of the causal subordinators because and weil in monolingual and bilingual data sets and secondly, verb second, that is, German main clause word order, in clauses introduced by these two conjunctions. Quantitative and quantitative methods will be used. The quantitative study of the mixed German/English data reveals almost twice as many because than weil in a corpus that otherwise has more German clause linkers than English ones. The qualitative analysis exposes verb second rather than verb final word order in predominantly German clauses introduced by because and weil. I will show first, that we understand enough about the interdependence between frequency distributions of word order patterns in monolingual speech and properties of the monolingual grammars to handle frequency in bilingual data. We can utilize frequency figures from monolingual and mixed corpora and combine them with syntactic and pragmatic knowledge to explain the interdependence between grammatical patters and frequency distributions in bilingual data. Secondly, I will demonstrate that it is the availability of context in language corpora that makes it feasible to examine the hypothesis that foreign conjunctions do not trigger verb-final word order in German clauses because they are used in functions that require main clause order.